scholarly journals Conceptualizing the relationship between parental education and own cognition in the Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (KHANDLE) study

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (S10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe W Eng ◽  
Paola Gilsanz ◽  
Elizabeth Rose Mayeda ◽  
M Maria Glymour ◽  
Dan M Mungas ◽  
...  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Mewton ◽  
Briana Lees ◽  
Lindsay Squeglia ◽  
Miriam K. Forbes ◽  
Matthew Sunderland ◽  
...  

Categorical mental disorders are being recognized as suboptimal targets in clinical neuroscience due to poor reliability as well as high rates of heterogeneity within, and comorbidity between, mental disorders. As an alternative to the case-control approach, recent studies have focused on the relationship between neurobiology and latent dimensions of psychopathology. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between brain structure and psychopathology in the critical preadolescent period when psychopathology is emerging. This study included baseline data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study® (n = 11,721; age range = 9-10 years; male = 52.2%). General psychopathology, externalizing, internalizing, and thought disorder dimensions were based on a higher-order model of psychopathology and estimated using Bayesian plausible values. Outcome variables included global and regional cortical volume, thickness, and surface area. Higher levels of psychopathology across all dimensions were associated with lower volume and surface area globally, as well as widespread and pervasive alterations across the majority of cortical and subcortical regions studied, after adjusting for sex, race/ethnicity, and parental education. The relationships between general psychopathology and brain structure were attenuated when adjusting for cognitive functioning. There was evidence of a relationship between externalizing psychopathology and frontal regions of the cortex that was independent of general psychopathology. The current study identified lower cortical volume and surface area as transdiagnostic biomarkers for general psychopathology in preadolescence. The widespread and pervasive relationships between general psychopathology and brain structure may reflect cognitive dysfunction that is a feature across a range of mental illnesses.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benson J. Ouma ◽  
Paul Bangirana ◽  
John M. Ssenkusu ◽  
Dibyadyuti Datta ◽  
Robert O. Opoka ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Elevated angiopoietin-2 (Angpt-2) concentrations are associated with worse overall neurocognitive function in severe malaria survivors, but the specific domains affected have not been elucidated. Methods Ugandan children with severe malaria underwent neurocognitive evaluation a week after hospital discharge and at 6, 12 and 24 months follow-up. The relationship between Angpt-2 concentrations and age-adjusted, cognitive sub-scale z-scores over time were evaluated using linear mixed effects models, adjusting for disease severity (coma, acute kidney injury, number of seizures in hospital) and sociodemographic factors (age, gender, height-for-age z-score, socio-economic status, enrichment in the home environment, parental education, and any preschool education of the child). The Mullen Scales of Early Learning was used in children < 5 years and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children 2nd edition was used in children ≥ 5 years of age. Angpt-2 levels were measured on admission plasma samples by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Adjustment for multiple comparisons was conducted using the Benjamini–Hochberg Procedure of False Discovery Rate. Results Increased admission Angpt-2 concentration was associated with worse outcomes in all domains (fine and gross motor, visual reception, receptive and expressive language) in children < 5 years of age at the time of severe malaria episode, and worse simultaneous processing and learning in children < 5 years of age at the time of severe malaria who were tested when ≥ 5 years of age. No association was seen between Angpt-2 levels and cognitive outcomes in children ≥ 5 years at the time of severe malaria episode, but numbers of children and testing time points were lower for children ≥ 5 years at the time of severe malaria episode. Conclusion Elevated Angpt-2 concentration in children with severe malaria is associated with worse outcomes in multiple neurocognitive domains. The relationship between Angpt-2 and worse cognition is evident in children < 5 years of age at the time of severe malaria presentation and in selected domains in older years.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristian Carmeli ◽  
Zoltán Kutalik ◽  
Pashupati P. Mishra ◽  
Eleonora Porcu ◽  
Cyrille Delpierre ◽  
...  

AbstractIndividuals experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage in childhood have a higher rate of inflammation-related diseases decades later. Little is known about the mechanisms linking early life experiences to the functioning of the immune system in adulthood. To address this, we explore the relationship across social-to-biological layers of early life social exposures on levels of adulthood inflammation and the mediating role of gene regulatory mechanisms, epigenetic and transcriptomic profiling from blood, in 2,329 individuals from two European cohort studies. Consistently across both studies, we find transcriptional activity explains a substantive proportion (78% and 26%) of the estimated effect of early life disadvantaged social exposures on levels of adulthood inflammation. Furthermore, we show that mechanisms other than cis DNA methylation may regulate those transcriptional fingerprints. These results further our understanding of social-to-biological transitions by pinpointing the role of gene regulation that cannot fully be explained by differential cis DNA methylation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S616-S616
Author(s):  
L. Rodrigues ◽  
J.V. Freitas-de-Jesus ◽  
G. Lavorato-Neto ◽  
D.D. Lima ◽  
E.R. Turato ◽  
...  

IntroductionThe relationship between parents and children is a complex link. In the process of pregnancy-birth-puerperium, frequent feelings such as responsibility, love, fear, uncertainty, generate strong expectations at birth. The death of a newborn may not be perceived as natural by the parents, considering the local culture and the context of great technological development of neonatology.ObjectiveTo explore possible guilt and fantasies in life experiences of parents during mourning process due to death of their newborn.MethodClinical-qualitative design, a particularization of qualitative methods here applied in clinical assistance settings with highlight to psychological aspects. Data collection with the technique of semi-directed interview with open-ended questions, in-depth. Sample intentionally constructed, with closure by theoretical saturation of information. The participants were 7 parents, mourning by the death of their child at the neonatal intensive care unit, in a university hospital of Campinas, São Paulo State.ResultsFeelings of guilt - conscious or not - lead to an internal and particular movement so that mourning can be lived. The participants showed certain embarrassment, accompanied by natural suffering facing to the cultural pattern that permeates the emotional experience. It predicts types of psychological meanings that the experience will give to the person.ConclusionHealth professionals working with bereaved parents should consider more deeply the moment these one experienced, with emphasis on the details of the death scenery, beside the problems of illness and death properly so called.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1337-1403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Kuehn ◽  
Pedro Landeras

Abstract Students from more advantageous family backgrounds tend to perform better than those from less advantageous backgrounds. But it is not clear that these students exert more effort. We build a model of students, schools, and employers to study the interaction of family background and effort exerted by the student in the education process. Two factors turn out to be key in determining the relationship between effort and family background: (i) the student’s attitude toward risk and (ii) how the student’s marginal productivity of effort depends on her family background. We show that when the degree of risk aversion is relatively low (high) compared to the sensitivity of the marginal productivity of effort, students from more advantageous family backgrounds exert more (less) effort. Empirically, we find that if parental education was reduced from holding a university degree to incomplete compulsory education, primary and secondary school students would exert around 21–23% less effort (approximately equal to a reduction of 2 hours weekly in homework). For primary school students we also find that marginal productivities of effort are higher for those from less advantageous family backgrounds.


Author(s):  
Marco BRANCUCCI

"Learning about freedom as freedom to make right choices responsibly is the pivotal task of educational intervention (Chionna 2001). As a practitioner of juvenile penitentiary re-education I experiment it, trying to re-educate young offenders in a prison, where the “capability approach” should be invoked (Sen 2011) and, according to the relational ethics paradigm (Muschitiello, 2012), we teach the young the capacity/ability of choice between alternative life experiences, which should be inspired and embodied by the educational authority of the adults. As agency is a constitutive element of a capability, I wonder: who is the agent? The one who re-educates an inmate? Or the inmate himself? Who should be more efficient and responsible to act in prison? Is it all about specific required competencies that are influenced by the context where penitentiary personnel and inmates act/react reciprocally? Penitentiary educators should adjust their approach, improving their language-as-dialogue tools first, just because the relationship with inmates is based on a dialogic axis. No exception can be made for cultural and linguistic mediators, who are involved in the treatment of foreign inmates (Brancucci 2018). So, I investigate the agency level of penitentiary educators and cultural/linguistic mediators, working together synergistically and/or autonomously. They try to respond to different scenarios, recognizing there is no one-size -fits-all approach to managing cases of re-educational emergencies, and assuming that educational interventions recall a daily presence in the context (Bertolini 1993), especially in prison where people ‘live’ in close proximity (WHO, 2020). But, how to achieve agency when this proximity fades away, or is temporarily interrupted, even turning into a virtual telematic educational approach? The challenge is to transform the consolidated educational-linguistic-dialogic practices into a new bidirectional way to think, act/react (from prison personnel towards inmates and vice-versa), because of the social distance required by the COVID-19 breakthrough."


2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurten Sargin

AbstractAdolescence is believed to be a highly problematic period when depression is prevalent. This study aims to investigate the relationship between adolescents' depression states and their feelings of guilt and shame in respect to gender, age, school performance and parental education levels. The participants consisted of 187 teenagers; 88 (47.1%) girls and 99 (52.9%) boys. Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI), the Guilt and Shame Scale (GES, Şahin), and a personal information form developed by the researcher were used as instruments. The study found a relationship between guilt and shame, that levels of depression were higher in 17-year-olds, and also that levels of depression, guilt and shame were found to be higher in girls than in boys. There was also a negative relationship seen between increased guilt and shame, and a decrease in mothers' education level.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Klein ◽  
Edward Sosu ◽  
Shadrach Dare

In this paper, we investigated whether and to what extent dimensions of socioeconomic background (parental education, parental class, free school meal registration, housing status, and neighborhood deprivation) predict overall school absences and different reasons for missing school (truancy, sickness, family holidays and temporary exclusion) among 4,620 secondary pupils in Scotland. Participants were drawn from a sample of the Scottish Longitudinal Study comprising linked Census data and administrative school records. Using fractional logit models and logistic regressions, we found that all dimensions of socioeconomic background were uniquely linked to overall absences. Multiple measures of socioeconomic background were also associated with truancy, sickness-related absence and temporary exclusion. Social housing and parental education had the most pervasive effect across these forms of absenteeism.


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